Pain is a Curious Thing
by Muggle Jane
Summary: A former Death Eater obsessed with a blond witch. She does what she has to, to survive. Rated M for implied assault, rape.


**A/N: Not my characters, I don't intend on making any money from this.**

**Dark, way darker than what I usually write. I blame the cold medicine. I wasn't sure I was going to publish it, but... Here it is!**

I knew he would come for me. I was outside when he came. I was digging in the dirt, enjoying the feel of the rich, damp soil in between my fingers, when his long shadow fell over me, obscuring the orange glow of the evening sun.

I could smell him, smell the scent of blood and his spicy cologne that I had identified as being uniquely _his_ the first day I'd come across him in the Department of Mysteries. "Hello," I greeted him pleasantly, not bothering to turn around, to look up.

I felt his hand close in my hair, winding it around his fist; I felt the pain as my long mass of blond hair tried to escape my scalp as he pulled me to my feet. "You're alone." I heard his voice, dark and threatening, like the shadow that lurks under your bed at night.

I didn't answer, I didn't need to. He knew the answer. "How long have you been watching?" I asked him, noting with some detachment that the pain was causing my voice to change.

"Three days." He sounded surprised, like he hadn't known he would answer me, or at least answer me with the truth.

"It's going to get dark soon. Why don't we go inside?"

He stilled. He'd been vibrating with power, with excitement, with violence, and I felt him still. Then his grip in my hair shifted and he was moving me toward my front door. He was taller than me, everyone was taller than me, and he was lifting me so that my feet were barely touching the ground. Pain is a curious thing. Pain only hurts you if you let it.

My door was open and we went inside. I heard him pause to lock it behind me. He released me abruptly and I fell to the floor, my knee colliding with the rough wooden planks.

"Would you like some tea?" I asked, brushing the hair away from my face, brushing the wetness from me cheeks. Tears, there had been tears. There would probably be more. He didn't answer, so I got up and set about making tea. I still didn't look at him, I didn't need to. He would be waiting for me. "Have you eaten? I made some soup for dinner and I could reheat it if you like."

I heard the crack of his gloved fist hitting the support beam by the door, and the whole house shook. "I am not hungry."

"You can't have eaten when you were in the trees, watching me."

I set the tea and the soup on the table for him and sank down to sit on the floor. I did look at him, then.

His black hair, long and curly, hung riotous around his face. His dark beard was shot through with silver, moreso than it had been the last time I had seen him. He was thinner, and there was a long gash running the length of his forehead. He was staring at me, that familiar burning behind his blue eyes. He looked haunted, but then I suppose he had been haunted. By me.

He sat down, looking suspiciously at the food and drink on the table. "Are you trying to poison me, witch?"

I shook my head. "Why would I do that?"

He stared at me as though he was seeing something he hadn't expected. "You know why I'm here." It wasn't a question, of course.

I nodded. "I've been waiting for you."

He balled up his fist and brought it into a table, breaking through the thick wood as though it was merely the kindling I used to start a fire. It was only my quick movements with my wand that kept the dishes, and their contents, from being dashed all over the floor.

He stared at my wand. "You didn't raise that to me."

I shook my head. "I don't think it would do much good. You'll just come back."

"Not if you killed me."

"I can't do that."

His mouth turned up into a sneer. "You're weak."

I stared up at him seriously, unblinking. "You wouldn't be here if you thought I was weak."

He sat. He balanced the bowl of soup on one knee, the cup of tea on the other, and he ate. His eyes stayed on me while he ate and I lowered my wand and watched him in return.

"I can heal that," I offered him, lifting a hand to point at the still-seeping wound across his forehead.

Another look of surprise. He nodded, once, his eyes narrowing warily. I didn't bother standing, just directed my wordless spell to him. The skin closed over itself in a shiny seam, though the blood lingered, decorating his face like a splash of sticky paint.

"Would you like to bathe? I can't imagine it's been very comfortable in the woods."

"You'll drown me."

I gave him a sympathetic smile. It must be hard, expecting nothing but pain and betrayal. "I won't," I vowed.

He was already finished with his small meal. "Where?"

I pointed to the door on the far wall, the one on the left.

He stood, letting my empty dishes fall to the floor and shatter, and I let them this time. His hand found my hair again and he pulled me along with him. "Undress me," he commanded, once we were standing on the cool tiles of my bathroom floor.

I did as he asked, my fingers gently pulling at his clothes until he stood without them. I folded the clothes and set them gently on the floor, and then there was a sharp sting that seemed to encompass my entire body. My clothes were in shreds around my feet, scraps still clinging to his fingers.

"I always liked that dress," I observed, staring at the ruined pink fabric pooled around me on the floor.

"Draw the bath," he instructed.

Pain, again. Pain can be turned into something sweeter, if you let it.

I helped him wash. I poured my own shampoo over his dampened hair and scrubbed my hands through it, massaging his scalp with my fingers. I reached the place along his back that he couldn't.

"Did he touch you?" he demanded, glaring up at me from where he was sitting in the water.

"Of course," I replied. "He's my lover

"I will kill him for touching what isn't his," he swore softly.

I patted his shoulder in a comforting manner, sitting where I was on the side of the tub. He wouldn't want me to leave the room, he was afraid I would run. And so I didn't. "They will come for you," I warned him.

Pain; my head connected dully with the tile floor. "I will be gone. And you will be..." He let the end of the sentence hang between us, unspoken.

I lifted my head to look at him. He was staring at me again. "You won't kill me. I'll never stop haunting you if you kill me." I wasn't taunting him, simply speaking the truth. He didn't like the truth, as proved by the thin trail wetness that ran down from the corner of my mouth. I touched it and stared in fascination at the end of my finger. Red- blood. It was my blood leaving my body. "It must be difficult, not to have known love."

He didn't hit me again, that surprised me. "What would you know about that?" he sneered.

"You think you love me; you're merely obsessed with me." I leaned back against the smooth, lilac-painted wall. "It's a shame, really. If you knew of love, maybe you could love me. I think I could love you."

A wave rose out of the bath and covered the floor, turning the remnants of my dress a dark, sodden color. He was looming over me. More pain, and then he had me pinned up against the wall. One of my eyes refused to open anymore, but I looked at him from the other one, my legs locked around his waist and my hands resting on his shoulders.

"You're wet!" It was an accusation of surprise. He almost dropped me, I felt the shudder in his arms.

"Feelings, sensations," I was speaking oddly now too, I think some of my teeth were missing. "They simply are. You make them whatever you want."

My orgasm shocked him. It was necessary, it kept me from losing myself to his cruelty, in a way that my mind would never come back. The next one surprised him even more. And the one after that. He got caught up in me, so caught up that he didn't notice when my hand closed around the enchanted galleon, in the splinters of what used to be my bedframe. I clutched it limply between my finger and thumb. It was my salvation, and his.

He was genuinely shocked again when they came for him. And the look in his eye, I think he finally understood. He went quietly, he didn't fight or protest when they took his wand and bound his hands behind his back, leading him out to the garden to Disapparate.

I could see the horror in my lover's eyes as he looked on me. He lifted me as gently as he could, cradling me to his chest. He refused to let anyone else touch me, not until he set me down in a bed in St. Mungo's.

* * *

An assortment of broken and cracked ribs, my cheekbone was fractured, my jaw was broken in three places and I had several teeth that needed to be regrown as well. Countless bruises and abrasions, I'd almost bitten clean through my tongue. They healed me up and then insisted on keeping me there to keep watch over me. They were afraid that I would hurt myself if they let me go. He'd already hurt me enough, I didn't need to cause more pain.

My lover sat beside the bed, holding my pale hand between both of his. "Luna," he breathed. He hadn't been able to let me go since he'd found me, except when the Healer ordered him to on penalty of being banished from my room. And yet, he seemed almost afraid to touch me, like he was worried he was going to break me.

I had a private room, whether that was a result of what I'd been through of who my lover was, I wasn't sure. But I was grateful for it.

I smiled. The expression still felt odd on my cheeks, as though my face wasn't ready to smile yet. "I knew he would come for me," I explained to the Auror who was standing uncomfortably at the foot of my bed. Harry. I loved Harry, he was a good friend to me. It was nice to be able to speak with my own voice again.

"How?" Harry asked kindly.

"I saw it in his eyes when they took me away, that day during the war. He wanted to love me and he didn't know how." I sighed. "I think he does now, though, now that it's too late. He was haunted by me, his mind wouldn't rest until he found me."

"You feel sympathy for him?" my lover demanded, as though he was unable to believe what he was hearing.

I nodded, turning to him and lifting up my other hand to rest it against his cheek. "Can you imagine living in a world without love?"

He frowned, but he didn't answer me.

"Lestrange is going to spend the rest of his life in Azkaban," Harry told me. "We'd like a statement from you, but we don't strictly need one."

I shook my head. "I don't want to relive it," I said. I'd locked it away in with the memories of finding my mother's body, at the bottom underneath everything else, behind a lock and bound in chains. It would stay there, quietly, sleeping, and not bother me.

"Do you need anything else?" Kingsley wanted to be alone with me. I could see it in his face. He wanted to weep for me, and he wouldn't do it with Harry standing there.

Harry left. He said he'd be along to check on me later.

My lover pulled me close and wept, his tears falling silently to get lost in my hair. I held him and let him weep for both of us. I'd left my tears around my broken home, I didn't have anymore left to give.

He needed therapy more than I did, but I didn't think less of him for it.

I visited Rodolphus Lestrange on the first Monday of every month until he died. Five visits, before he killed himself. Kingsley and I were the only ones who went to his funeral, everyone else he had known was already dead or also imprisoned.

He didn't really kill himself. I knew who killed him, and I was grateful. I wasn't a killer, but I knew some of my friends were. They took justice for me, for my dad. I was glad Dad was already dead, this would have ended him.

I would catch him watching me sometimes, my lover, his dark eyes full of questions and concern. He never asked, though, and I never talked about it. It took a while until I was ready to accept him into my bed again, but he waited uncomplainingly, and he loved me. He wanted me to move in with him and I did. I didn't ask what he did with my house, and he didn't tell me.

I was glad he had known love. I was glad I was able to love him. Some nights I would wake up, the memories threatening to escape from behind their chains, where they were buried at the bottom, under everything else. Kingsley would hold me, cradle me against the solid wall of comfort that was his body.


End file.
